Biden, the victory speech: “I will be a president who does not see red and blue states, but the United States. It's time to heal and reconcile "
"Our work begins with putting Covid under control", said the elected president, because "there can be no economic revival" if the health crisis continues to strike. An opposite approach to Trump's. The choice of asking openness and listening to those who did not vote for him is also opposite: "Let's give each other a chance." The tycoon on the contrary in the inaugural speech had spoken of "American massacre", exasperating political and social divisions as never before. , ethnic of the country
"May this dark age of demonization end here and now." In his victory speech from Wilmington, Delaware, Joe Biden called on America to overcome the divisions of recent years and look to the future together, Democrats and Republicans, with trust and respect. Introduced by deputy Kamala Harris, Biden quoted only once, in passing, Donald Trump, who continues to talk about fraud and not recognize the victory of the opponent. But Biden spoke to the 70 million Americans who voted for Trump, promising that he will also be their president. "The time has come to heal and reconcile in America," said Biden, who knows how these elections have left wounds that are difficult to heal.
It was an optimistic speech, the most important for a politician with a long career and who has already tried to become president twice, unsuccessfully: in 1988 and in 2008. By a curious case of fate, the proclamation of Joe Biden as president it took place on the same day in November that, 48 years ago, he entered the United States Senate for the first time. Since then Biden has become one of the protagonists of Washington politics, a centrist Democrat, attentive to institutional dynamics, open to confrontation with the Republicans, with whom he worked for many years in the Senate. Biden was also a man who suffered a lot: he lost his first wife and daughter in a car accident; son Beau for a brain tumor.
These two characteristics - respect for institutions and the ability to "feel" the pain and suffering of others - have covered Biden's speech of victory, postponed for days and days, waiting for a long and complicated electoral count to come to an end. From the Wilmington stage, Biden immediately wanted to rule out the possibility that anyone could question his victory. "
The American people have spoken. 74 million Americans voted for us - he said - more than any other presidential election in American history ”. Immediately after the claim of victory, however, the hand extended to the Republicans arrived: “I promise to be a president who will try not to divide, but to unite - he said -. A president who does not see red states or blue states, but only the United States of America ".
Central to the speech was the reference to the pandemic, which continues to spread and devastate large areas of the country. "Our work begins with putting Covid under control," said Biden, according to whom "there can be no economic revival" if the health crisis continues to strike. In this, Biden has shown that he believes in a diametrically opposite approach to Trump's. If the current president has always explained that the American economy cannot be "closed, due to the coronavirus, because otherwise the economy will no longer exist", the president-elect has instead set the control of the virus as his priority. . On Monday, he announced, he will begin work to ensure that the pandemic health plan can come into effect as early as January 20, the day of Biden’s entry into the White House.
Covid, economy, but also racial justice and climate were the priorities announced by Biden, who also promised to restore America to its role as "a beacon and the respect it deserves" in the world. In an important nod to how he got to the White House, Biden said he was “proud of having put together the largest and most diverse coalition in history. Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Progressives, Moderates, Conservatives, Young, Old, Urban, Suburb and Country, Gay, Straight, Tansgender, White, Hispanic, Asian, Native American ”. Then, in acknowledgment of the support obtained by African Americans (even during the difficult phase of the Democratic primary), Biden said: “Especially when my campaign was at its most difficult point, the African American community. took a stand for me. I'll never forget it". The black vote, in fact, proved essential to Biden's victory in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia.
The most important, and politically delicate, part of Biden's victory speech was however that dedicated to the question of overcoming the conflicts, the exasperated polarization that marked this electoral campaign and the four years that have just passed. If Trump, in his inaugural speech in January 2017, had spoken of an "American massacre", exasperating the country's political, social and ethnic divisions as never before, Biden chose the opposite path. He asked to "tone down", not to recognize in the political rival an enemy but an American. The new president spoke of "the soul of America" which must be cared for and renewed; and he asked for openness and listening also to those who did not vote for him: "Let's give each other a chance," he said. It should be noted that Donald Trump in his 2016 victory speech had put aside the resentment and excesses of the election campaign and asked America, Democrats and Republicans and independents, to "come together as one people". A resolution that, four years later, appears to have been completely disregarded. No president has raised more stubborn opposition than Donadl Trump.
In the end, Biden's was a warm, optimistic speech, in which the reference to the "arc of history that leans towards justice", the sentence of Martin Luther King that Barack Obama had in turn inserted in the victory speech, also resounded. at Chicago's Grant Park in 2008. Obama's words, at the time, were mainly centered on the novelty of the first African-American president in history; Obama quoted a 106-year-old woman, Ann Nixon Cooper, born a generation after slavery and who was then still alive to testify to the first black president. Biden today obviously cannot - by age, history, formation - claim the same symbolic force. But his speech seemed to trace Obama's in the proud claim of diversity as the heart of the American experience, and in the vision of America as the place of infinite possibilities. “Yes, We Can”, Biden said at one point.
In this regard, the speech of the president-elect was introduced by Kamala Harris, the first woman and the first black and Asian woman to become vice president. Even in the case of Kamala Harris, there was a significant historical coincidence. His appointment as vice president comes on the day of the 150th anniversary of the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, the one that says that the right to vote "cannot be denied or reduced ... on the basis of race, color or a previous condition of servitude." Dressed in white, the color of the suffragettes, Harris emphasized the historical character of her candidacy. Speaking of his mother, who came from India to the United States at 19, Harris said: “I think of her and I think of those generations of women - black, Asian, white, Hispanic, Native American - who have prepared this with their action. moment. I will be the first woman to fill this role, but I will not be the last ". As Biden did after her, Harris asked Americans, in times of pandemics, to "believe in science".
The evening ended with the whole Biden family and Harris' husband Douglas celebrating on stage, with streamers and fireworks. Earlier, in the final stage of his speech, Biden had referred to his missing son, Beau. Citing a psalm that speaks of rising "on the wings of eagles," Biden said he understands the pain of the many who have lost their loved ones in this epidemic. Another reference, the last and most exciting, to the tragedy that never ceases to shake America.
